6.3 Capturing using VirtualVCR

If you own a capture card that is based on WDM (=Windows Driver Model) drivers, problems when capturing with VirtualDub occur frequently. There are several capture programs that utilize WDM though, and one of them is VirtualVCR, which has some unique features, one of them and probably one of the most important is that it is freeware.

Configuration
After starting VirtualVCR you'll first get this sparse window:

The toolbar includes the following options:

1. Opens the settings dialog.
2. Saves the current settings as the standard profile.
3. Opens another profile.
4. Saves the current settings to a new profile.
5. Starts the capture process.
6. Activates the preview.
7. Opens the statistics window.
8. Displays a list of dropped frames.

1. Path and filename of the capture file.
2. If you check this checkbox a time stamp is automatically inserted into the filename. Recommended to prevent the overwriting of files!
3. Adds a compatibility index to the avi file; only needed for old applications.
4. If you check this box a log file is created containing the most important statistics of the process like dropped frames, etc.

1. Here you can specify a max duration of the capture process.
2. Quite self explanatory. VirtualVCR automatically quits after the capture process stops.
3. Set a threshold for minimum free space.
4. Minimum free space in MB.

The next important tab is 'Devices':

Here we first choose our Audio and Video capture device and then hit 'Select'. Due to a bug in VirtualVCR those settings aren't taken into account immediately. Therefore we close the settings dialog box by hitting 'Ok' and then immediately reopen it again.

In Video source we specify the appropriate input (Video Tuner, Composite or S-Video).

In Device Settings we now choose 'Video Capture Pin' and hit 'Prop'. This opens the settings dialog for your capture card, which is similar as this one:

1. Frames per Second.
2. Colorspace. If YUY2 doesn't work, try other settings. This depends on the hardware you are using.
3. The resolution, for PAL 7** x 576, for NTSC 7** x 480. It is recommended that you choose the largest resolution.

Next tab is 'Audio':

1. If you also want to capture audio (who doesn't?), tick the checkbox!
2. In the 'Format' area you can choose Resolution, Frequency and the amount of channels.
3. After clicking 'Input Settings' you can choose the input type (e.g. Line-In)
4. Under 'TV audio' you can adjust special audio settings for direct TV capture. Some transmissions can contain more than one audio channel or special commentary for visually-disabled persons.
5. If you want to compress the audio while capturing you have to check 'Compress Audio' (not recommended)
6. Choose the audio codec if compression is switched on.
7. Settings for the audio codec.

1. Here you can enable/disable this function.
2. Here you can toggle the dynamic resampling.
3. If the difference between audio and video frequency is constant you should choose this option.
4. The relative difference between audio and video frequency.
5. If the offset between audio and video is constant you can sync audio and video here.
6. Sync the audio using the DirectShow-Interface values.
7. Manual syncing.
8. Video - Audio offset in milliseconds.
9. If one of the streams should 'act' as a Master Stream enable this option. (Only possible if Resample Audio (1.) is disabled).
10. Enable the logging of the offset values. This file can get fairly big, therefore it's only recommended for testing purposes (short clips).

When opened the Tuner- dialog is empty, but we are going to make the TV Tuner device search for channels in a minute. First we have to set the country code and the input type though. Therefore we hit the button TV Tuner Device. The following dialog box opens:

1. Here you can set the country code, for germany it is 49.
2. The input signal of your Tv-card.
3. Tuner mode: TV.
4. PAL, NTSC or Secam.

Activating 'Aggressive Channel Scan' will result in more channels being found, including those with a weaker signal. If you want to use those channels you can decide later on, therefore I'd recommend activating the checkbox. After the scan is done a list with all channels will pop up:

I recommend that you also name the channels appropriately! To do so, just choose the channel in question and enter the name in the 'Name' field. Afterwards you have to hit 'Update' or the new name will not be saved!

This work is rather straining, but don't worry, you'll only have to do it once! After everything is done, we are going to close the dialog box by hitting 'OK' and then saving our Settings as the default ones. You can do this by hitting the button with the 'Floppy' - symbol in the main window of VirtualVCR.

VirtualVCR can already apply filters during the capture process, which is not recommended though. It is way better to capture the unfiltered movie first and then do some post-processing in VirtualDub or AviSynth. For completeness sake I'm going to explain the filters tab too:

1. Activate filtering during the capture process.
2. In this list in the beginning only filters are shown which have been installed with VirtualVCR.
3. To show all Direct-Show filters, you have to check this box. It will add all available filters to the list (2).
4. By hitting the 'ADD' button you can add a previously selected filter to the process!
5. This list shows all activated filters. The filters are applied in the shown order.
6. By hitting one of these buttons you can (re)move the filters or change their properties!

Now we can first try to start the preview window. To do so we are going to hit the monitor-symbol (# 6) in the main window . If you do not see a picture now, VirtualVCR can't handle the Preview-Pin of you card. In this case Smart Tee Filter helps.

Attention! Always close the preview window before changing settings in VirtualVCR!

To activate the Preview mode go to the settings dialog again and navigate to the View tab.

1. Use Smart Tee Filter for Preview
   The Smart Tee Filter parts the Capture-Signal into a capture-stream and a preview-stream.This should always be activated if VirtualVCR cannot handle the preview pin right or it doesn't work correctly.
2. Dock Capture Stats Window
   As it says, this docks the capture statistics window to the main window of VirtualVCR
3. Show Capture Stats on Stop
   ...
4. Show Color Histogram
   displays a color histogram during the capture process
5. Show Audio Scope
   By looking at the audio scope (during capture, or testing) you can find out the fitting audio settings.
6. Always on Top
   ...
7. Hide Tool/Status Bar
   ...

If everything worked fine it's once again time to save our settings as standard settings.

The Capture
If all settings are correct and Audio and Video sound/look ok, it's time to finally proceed to the actual capture process!

Manual Capture
With a simple click onto the capture button (# 5) VirtualVCR starts the capture process. You can always see the current status in the statistics window, which you can activate by hitting the stats button (# 7)

During capture the toolbar is reduced to these three buttons. The very left one stops the capture:

Manual capture with time limit:
If you cannot be here (or do not want to have to watch the time) you can set a specific time period after which VirtualVCR stops the process automatically. The setting can be found in the 'Stop' tab of the settings dialog.

Timer-based capture
This is not a built in function but a separate freeware program. You can find the download link at the end of this page. VirtualVCR Scheduler starts and stops the capture process at a time you specify in advance.

VirtualVCR Hotkeys
VirtualVCR can be accessed by a number of Hotkeys:
 

Key	Function
F5	start capture process
Esc	stop capture process
P	toggle Preview
S	toggle Stats window
F	toggle fullscreen mode
H	toggle tool and statusbar
T	toggle 'Always on top'
C	calls the settings dialog
Page Up	Next higher channel
Page Down	Next lower channel

Commandline parameters for VirtualVCR
You can also call and set VirtualVCR via commandline:
 

Parameter	Function
-capture	immediately start capturing after start
-channel "X"	channel number
-profile "configfile"	Choose another configuration than the default one. "configfile" must be with a full local path (c:\yourdir\yourconfig).
-runfor "seconds"	length of the capture in seconds
-output "capturefile"	name for the output file.

References:
VirtualVCR
VirtualVCR Scheduler

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Last edited on: 06/10/2004 | First release: 05/07/2002 | Author: zisoft | Translator: killingspree | Content by Doom9.org